Murder Rates Tell Story Of Diverging Populations

July 02, 1994|By MIKE SWIFT; Courant Staff Writer

What large metropolitan area had the lowest murder rate in the United States in 1992? Hartford, Conn.

In March, ``Parade'' magazine reported that the Hartford metropolitan area -- which includes three dozen surrounding towns -- had the lowest murder rate among the 75 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in 1992, the most recent year for which the FBI has statistics.

That year, the Hartford region had 2.2 murders per 100,000 residents, compared to a national average for U.S. metropolitan areas of 10.4 murders per 100,000 residents, the FBI says. The Census Bureau defines metropolitan areas by central cities and their associated suburbs.

One reason the region's rate was so low is that the murder count for Hartford in 1992 was 13. As of Friday, Hartford had 26 homicides this year.

But experts such as David Rusk, a consultant to the Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce and the legislature on regionalism, say the disparity in murder rates between the city and suburbs is another indication that the populations of Hartford and its suburbs are diverging.

Rusk and advocates of regionalism such as state Sen. Thirman L. Milner, D-Hartford, say there is a correlation between poverty and crime in a small city such as Hartford.

Milner, co-chairman of the legislature's planning and development committee, is an advocate of regional government. ``The city has been overburdened, based on the number of people who depend on government,'' Milner said. That means the city also gets unfairly burdened by crime, he said.

Statistics collected by the Connecticut Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations for the 1991-92 fiscal year support that argument. The poverty rate in Hartford (27.5 percent) was about six times higher than the average of 4.2 percent for the state's 169 towns.

The rate of serious crime, such as rape, robbery and murder, was also six times higher in Hartford than for the entire state. Hartford had 59 serious crimes per 1,000 residents, while the statewide average was 9.8, according to ACIR statistics.

Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., and a nationally known expert on the relationships between cities and suburbs, said 1990 Census figures show just over one-third of the 37-town Hartford metro area's poor -- about 20,000 people -- lived in suburbs of Hartford. But poor people outside Hartford were almost exclusively white and were dispersed throughout the region.

``You really can't compare crime rates among poor whites with crime rates among poor blacks and poor Hispanics because nowhere do poor whites live as ghettoized as poor blacks and poor Hispanics,'' Rusk said. ``Poor whites are much more scattered out in the dominant white middle class popuation.''

The metro area in 1990 had 31 census tracts -- areas within municipalities that roughly equate to small neighborhoods -- where more than 20 percent of the population was below the poverty line. All were in Hartford.

That concentration of poverty is part of what causes crime, Rusk said.

Wethersfield Police Chief John Karangekis, outgoing president of the Capitol Region Chiefs of Police Association, said people tend to believe the region's crime is more serious than it actually is.

``For our area, since we're not used to the big city numbers, [the four murders on Wednesday] was a very horrendous day,'' Karangekis said. ``The perception of these things makes it appear worse than it is.''